Come and join us to Patchwork and Quilting world

Come and join us to Patchwork and Quilting world

The third Saturday of June (this year 15th of June) we celebrate the Patchwork day across Europe, aiming to make mord people familiar with this technique. Therefore this is the reason that I am starting those on line free lessons, in collaboration with www.ftiaxto.gr, so that we attract more people in Greece to the magic world of fabric, color and shapes, because this is what patchwork is.

What is patchwork?

Mainly two words:

Patchwork = Patch (small piece of fabric) and work, which means that in order to make patchwork, we work with small pieces of fabric, which are put together either by hand or using a sewing machine. We are thus producing a new piece of fabric, as big as we want, that is consisting of smaller pieces. The way we put those pieces together may vary and makes the most of the final result as well as the colors we use.

Quilting = (derives from the latin word culcita, meaning a large stuffed sac). When we quilt, we actually sew two or more layers of material together to make a thicker padded material.

The person who deals with patchwork needs to be concentrated and very accurate. We may proceed to patchwork using recycled fabric. Old curtains, sheets can be combined along with new fabric to give us something new. Let me show you my very first quilt and tell you how it started.

While in patchwork class I thought why to put all those samples in a folder and let them be? I also had the teal fabric from an old sheet, that I adored and started putting them together. I added something after every lesson and there we are. Ambitious first project with many defects, but also my favorite so far.

During the next weeks, there will easier things to learn, so that you can understand whether you like this technique or not. In my case was love at first sight.

History of Patchwork

Just a few words about history, because there are so many articles in English on the Internet. All started in Europe, but it grew tremendusely in USA, when arrived there with English and Dutch settlers. Beyond its obvious importance on settlers families, from finance point of view, it was also an opportunity for the women to have social life, as it was something that was done in groups.

Before 19ο century, it had mainly to do with cloths’ repairing. After those cloths were worn beyond repairing, they were transformed to quilts, because of the poverty of the lower social classes. When later cotton fabric became more approchable to middle class, it was then that quilts started to become pieces of art, something that flourished after the invention of the sewing machine.

Quilting on the other hand has its origins in the Ancient Egypt and China. Quilted pieces of soldiers armour dated in Middleage were also found.

Now that you have a rough idea of what patchwork and quilting is, I look forward to meet you on our next meeting, next week to speek about the notions we use while making patchwork.

Thank you for your excellent lessons about patchwork. I have saved them so that I can study them in detail. Today's lesson about the notions used for patchwork is particularly useful as we learn what is available in Greece and where we can buy them. I'm looking forward to the next lessons too.